Psychedelic Integration, part 2 - Preparation
DISCLAIMER - Psychedelics are still largely illegal in the United States. I am not a medical doctor and cannot recommend any types of medication. This post is not encouraging anyone to engage in illegal activities or consume illicit substances, and I cannot provide the substances themselves or any help in obtaining them. The decision to try such substances should only be made with careful consideration and in consultation with your physician, as there can be an array of complications including negative interactions with other psychotropic medications. But if you are considering using these substances in your own healing work, then you should have scientifically accurate information about them, and about how to get the most from these types of experiences.
It may be counter-intuitive, but the integration process actually works best when it starts BEFORE whatever experience it is that you are going into. The biggest determinants of a psychedelic experience are your mind set and the setting you are doing the trip in (you will hear this referred to as “set and setting”), and therefore putting focus on and making decisions about both of those is the first step towards successful integration. This part of the process is often called preparation, but it is important to recognize it as the very first step of integration, as the decisions you are making here will affect all of the later work.
So, the first part of the integration process is simply deciding what the setting and structure of your journey will be - Which medicine or medicines will you be using? Are you tripping alone, in a group, or with a facilitator? Where will you do it? What kind of support resources - both during and after the experience - will you have available? Having answers to these questions will help you get the most out of the experience as it’s happening, and give you the most constructive material to go into integration with (though integration is also important if you’ve had a bad trip).
And then there is preparing your mindset. That means that in the lead up to your experience you are sitting with yourself. You are getting clear on where you feel static in your body and your mind, and where you feel settled. From that process, you are developing an intention for the work. The experience of your journey may or may not speak directly to this intention, but the process of developing one is extremely helpful in preparing the ground of your psyche to get the most out of this endeavor, and will be an anchor point to return to later in the integration process.
In the spirit of sitting with yourself, people generally get the most out of these experiences when they have built space in their schedule around the trip itself. In our overly busy lives there can be a tendency to want to squeeze these experiences in - work until 5 pm Friday, journey Saturday evening/Sunday morning, back to work on Monday. And while you can certainly get some insight out of that, you will get far more if you give yourself a day or so beforehand, and a day or so afterwards. In a future post we will talk about the intersection of meditation and psychedelics, but in this preparation period meditation can be an excellent way to get settled into yourself.
Since body and mind are really different aspects of the same thing (remember, mind is the experience of being a body in a world) preparing your mind also means preparing your body. This can include being very deliberate with your diet (this might mean fasting or restricting certain types of foods, or preparing your body through supplements), sleep, and sexual activity. And so forth.
And the clearer you can get on both your set and setting in the lead-up, the better chance you have to get the kind of clarity that can really be translated into actionable changes in your life. Which is ultimately where the healing happens.
And if you are looking for help in your own personal growth, whatever your path looks like, then please reach out!